Saturday, May 12, 2012

The Boyproof Watch II

II

Each day at 4:40 Maskelyne would leave his office above
the Mechanical Theatre and descend to the lobby to discuss the evening’s
program with the ushers, confectioners and box office staff. He would receive
final reports from the stagehands about required repairs and anomalies that
required observation. And then, reminding the stage manager to have a show
report waiting on his desk the next morning, he would straighten his coat, don
his top hat, and walk home.

When his key had been inserted into
the front gate the gas lamps of his house would ignite, and as he walked the
path up to the front door the deer, rabbits and other woodland sculptures would
turn to watch him, bowing their heads slightly in deference. They were far less
docile to unauthorized visitors.

In the anteroom his doorman, an
early unnamed creation, would take his coat with one hand, his hat with the
other and present him with a freshly mixed gin and tonic with the other. Then
assuming that he didn’t pass an umbrella to its fourth hand, it would revert to
the form of a coat rack. As he walked through the door of his study the player
pyrophone in the corner would begin its program of Mozart etudes, the bar of
orange flame that fronted the fire organ undulating with the music, casting a lively
dance of shadows across the room. He would sit and read the newspaper fetched
for him by his automatic paper, slipper and ball fetcher, which would lie
curled at his feet.

At seven o’clock the dinner chime
would ring and he’d put down the paper and his drink and proceed to the dining
room, where his clockwork servants would serve the meal that they had prepared
for him. There were never less than three and sometimes as many as eight of
these automatons, depending on his current research and the menu. Across the
table might scuttle a small mechanical intent on keeping his wine glass filled,
while draped around the chandelier above, a sinuous segmented artifice would
spin its internal spice rack at his request and shake vigorously where he
pointed. The other more human-shaped automatons would move to and from the
kitchen delivering courses and taking away empty plates and silverware.

Occasionally there would be
accidents—food spilled, or poorly prepared, or other irregularities. When these
occurred, Maskelyne would pull a small silver notepad from his vest pocket and make
a note for future repair and refinement.

After dinner, he would climb the
stairs to his workshop in the aerie. While much of the construction of his
automatons was done in the basement, it was in the upper workshop that he made
the fine adjustments and detailed work that transformed articulated metal into authentic
creations. For it was here that he performed the infinitely minute work of
clockwork, and the much more mysterious task of imbuing it with spirit.

The truth was, for all of his wide reading and
experience the greatest lesson of clockwork that Maskelyne had learned was as a
young apprentice. Then he had learned that the most accomplished Makers always
left a small space in their mechanisms right in the midst of the gears, cogs,
pillars and pinions. This tiny gap in the machinery was, he was told, to be
filled with something immaterial. Traditionally, this was a personal wish that
the clocksmith would whisper into the mechanism. But in Maskelyne’s creations, what
was stuffed in the space was a gauzy piece of almost-nothing that he kept stored
in a small silver flask.

The spiritualists call this
substance ectoplasm, a near-transparency that they believe is the materialized
essence of the spirits of the dead. Maskelyne, who had seen more ectoplasm and
put it to greater use than the most celebrated of mediums, was convinced that
they had foolishly misidentified it. He believed that this translucent
material, fragile as a spider-web and with even less weight, was astral
ephemera, the foam of an invisible sea, and entirely unrelated to the soul or any
other human matters. But he also knew that when placed in a mechanism the
material provided an indefinable vitality that made his inventions nonpariel.

The method of collecting the ectoplasm
was inspired by shipwrecked mariners in sun-scorched seas, who capture precious
fresh water by filling a cup with seawater and collecting the drops of
condensation that gather on its sides. In a similar fashion, he created an
object to collect the condensation of the astral realm. In the center of a
glass orb he had placed an artificial icon, an abstract symbolic sculpture of
gold, silver and brass. The object was devoid of specific meaning—Maskelyne was
rigorously uninterested in religious matters—but the design and material
mimicked those of traditional iconography. When charged with electricity, over
hours the icon would accrete a layer of fine dust which would gradually begin to
grow webs, then a tissue, and finally a gossamer-thin covering of translucent
material. This was the ectoplasm, which he cut with a slender silver knife and
then captured with a tiny silver net, to be stored in the flask. A small amount
of this substance went into the ticking heart of every one of the Professor’s
creations.

On this particular September night
with which we are concerned, a windy and warm evening filled with flying leaves,
Maskelyne was engaged in this very process, bent over his workbench, loupe held
in his monocle eye, slicing the misty stuff with the care of a surgeon into an
organ or a pauper into his last orange, when he heard the ringing of a tiny
bell. It was soft yet very distinct—it had to be, in a house filled with bells
and chimes. It was insistent. And it told the Professor that there was an
intruder in his house.

About Me

I'm a Seattle-based writer, playwright and director. For the last fifteen years I've worked as a freelance arts journalist, primarily for Seattle Weekly, where I was the theatre critic from 1995-2000, and subsequently as a theatre columnist from 2006-2008, then worked at The 5th Avenue Theatre for two years as their PR Manager. I've recently turned to fiction writing and am currently working on my second novel.